On Friday 09 May 2008 19:22:17 Brian K. White wrote: snip>
2.4 kernels had the ability for a while to to make use of the fake-raid hooks in the bios to boot (the way FreeBSD still does, and Windows.) That is exactly the purpose and the definition of fake-raid, to provide just enough ability to get started without actually doing any raid work in the bios or firmware.
That support was dropped in 2.6
Doesn't make sense? Agrevates you? Welcome to Linux.
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Good question. I've been with linux since suse 9.3 and have been welcomed to linux many times. I put my professional hat on. It leaves me feeling contempt. It's a very bad decision. Why - software production is aimed at an end users. The more the merrier also hopefully making them happy or even better happier people. There is clearly a lot of motherboards about with intel soft raid on. The software interface is likely to be fairly stable and is also very likely to migrate upwards in a sane way. It must provide a soft interface for booting other wise nothing would run on it. Even windows. And that must apply to any raid level it supports. The same facilities will be available on any soft raid board. If it differs from the intel soft interface it doesn't deserve support and is likely to fall by the wayside in any case. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they use the same bios calls that have been around from PC day 1 as that will give upwards compatability. Secondly still with the same hat on there is a kernal patch available for intel ich7 but as the kernel people decided to drop what ever they were using it can't be used as the system will not install. I would hope they weren't using a hook as there will be a perfectly usable interface in the bios. Finally. Why should ASUS carry on supplying it or intel bother writing it in the first place. Hat off. I think this is a common problem for oss in some areas. People do things because they want too. Some areas are more glamorous than others and there is this apparent challenge aspect and the need to change things etc. A more rational approach would be to avoid re inventing the wheel unless there is no alternative. That it's not oss is not a valid reason for re invention. That it's pay for is. In my field we are sometimes asked / reminded to think about customers expectations. It can have a dramatic effect on change. Just what would you expect to be able to do when upgrading a machine for instance. eg It took some time for kmail to add an import facility from it's previous incarnation. The developers offered several other imports and must have thought that no one would ever use it or upgrade it again. Out of interest my suse 9.3 was bought and came with a support phone number. I used it to register and found that they couldn't support a bog standard intel mother board. The person was very apologetic pointing out that they really should be able to support a board like that. We even had a conversation about using bios calls for boot and maybe the initial parts of installation. I was given a couple of tips and 9.3 installed cleanly without them. It's all a bit sad. There has allready been a comment about the various orgs talking to each other. I could go on. From the other posts there is a language problem and I think some lack of understanding. An interface to me might be a piece of software, hardware registers or even a keyboard. John -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org